Today’s page, like yesterday’s, contains an Imperative Verb, but this one looks a little different; dagive! Don’t be put off by its length – it’s just a shorter word is all. What interests us here is that, unlike yesterday’s lege, crede and sine, it ends in a –a.

Verbs, you see, belong to families. There are four families of Verb, and each member of a family behaves in the same way as its kin, and in a slightly different way to members of other families. We call them First, Second, Third and Fourth, but we could just as easily call them Frey, Greyjoy, Stark and Targaryen. You will also hear of a Fifth or Mixed family, but it is not really a family in its own right; it’s more like the Third and Fourth families combined to form a new House – Stargaryen? I think I’ll stop now…

To see how each family behaves a little differently (but not all that differently) from other families, here is a comparison of the various Imperative Verb Forms. Remember that all* members of the same family will behave in the same way.

Family Verb Singular Imperative Plural Imperative

Frey (1st) do, dare, dedi, datum da give! date

Greyjoy (2nd) video, videre, vidi, visum vide see! videte

Stark (3rd) lego, legere, legi, lectum lege read! legite

Targaryen (4th) audio, audire, audivi, auditum audi listen! audite

Mixed capio, capere, cepi, captum cape seize! capite

* Okay, there are just a few outliers. duc!lead!fac!do!dic!speak! and fer!carry! And, mirabile dictu, I just Googled Stargaryen. Turns out it’s a thing!

Again, however, Miranda blocked Jessica. ‘How does she know my name?’ she thought to herself. ‘Give me the suitcase,’ she said to the woman.